Begin to Blog: Create a Networked Blog and Facebook Fan Page

I know I haven't finished the Begin to Blog series. So many things have gotten my attention. But, I have had so many people ask about creating Facebook Fan Pages. They are really simple to create, but there are several steps involved in the process. Unfortunately, I haven't found one post that explains each step to create a Facebook Fan Page…until now!

Sign into your Facebook Account and follow the steps below to Create a Facebook Fan Page!

Create Networked Blog

In order to have an automatic feed make updates to your Facebook Fan Page wall from your blog posts, you will need to create a Networked Blog. If you want to manually update your Fan Page yourself, you can skip this step. Although, I would highly encourage you do this because it leaves you less work to do your own updates.

When you have 25 Fans and you can get a Vanity URL, which is essentially a URL that you can name whatever you want. For example, my vanity url is: https://savingslifestyle.com/Facebook. To create your own go to:

You can still create manual fan page updates. Just take the link to whatever post or site you want to share and manually update your Fan Page (in your “What's On Your Mind” section). It's a great way to share something quickly and not doing an official post. It's also another way to cross promote other blogs and continue to build our community!

Manually Pulling Networked Blog Feeds

Sometimes it takes a while for the updates to show up on your Networked Blog and Fan Page. You can manually pull the feed to have posts show sooner on your Networked Blog Page.

Go to Your Profile Page

Select the Blog Tab

Click on your Networked Blog

On your Networked Blog Page, scroll down until you see your most recent posts

Click on “Pull Feed” and your feed should update immediately

There have been times I have received error messages stating the manual pull wasn't successful, so I just try again. It always works. This may be beneficial to do when you have a timely offer that you want your readers to see.

Note Updates versus Feed Updates

I see several people have a Notes update in Facebook rather than a Networked Blog Feed Update. This is fine if you're not concerned about getting a click over/traffic to your site. As a blogger, I would encourage you to try to get traffic to your site and not a micro-site (like the Notes application).

If you have a Networked Blog, I would highly suggest you update as shared above to get your auto-updates on your Wall. If you want to remove the Notes feature from your Personal Wall, simply:

Settings (at top of page next to your name)

Application Settings

Notes

Edit Settings

Additional Permissions

Remove the check to “Publish to Streams”

If you already have a Fan page and you have Notes publishing to it, you will need to follow these steps to remove them:

Go to your Fan Page

Edit Page (left hand side)

Scroll down to Notes

Application Settings

Additional Permissions

Remove the check to “Publish to Streams”

Your Notes should be removed now, and hopefully you set up the Networked Blog feed to have auto-updates take effect and get traffic to your site!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I’ve been trying to figure out how to make this happen for sometime now! I’ve had my fan page set up but couldn’t figure out how to get my feed to go to my fan page – not my personal page! Thank you so much – this is awesome!

Great info, Andrea! I really like interacting with fans on Facebook, just another part of developing relationships with readers.

I like manually feeding my blog posts to Facebook, mostly because it allows me to customize the message. I’ve found that what’s a good title for a blog post isn’t necessarily a good update for Facebook, so I manually post and try to create “enticing” headlines that would encourage people to click over.

To me, the biggest drawback of fan pages is that you can’t yet receive notifications when someone writes on the wall or uploads fan photos, etc. So, I make sure to check it at least a couple of times a day so I can make sure no one’s done anything offensive on the page.

Carrie, that is my biggest peeve with Fan Pages too! I try to check a few times a day. I’ve also noticed when someone links my Fan Page Update, the convo happens on their wall and it’s essentially stored on my wall’s update/comments too.

Since I do my auto feeds, I also may leave a comment on it with some enticing thoughts to get a click over. And, if I’m really excited I tell them just that too!

This is awesome! You ROCK! I can’t wait to set this up for my daddy blog! I have had the facebook fan page on my to-do list since I started my blog in January, but haven’t had time to figure it out yet. And I really had no clue there were so many steps involved. I definitely see the advantages of linking facebook to a parenting blog, especially now that so many parents — and grandparents — use fb. (My mom and even my grandmother — or Mamaw as I have called her since I was a toddler — read my dad blog to see what my 3-year-old daughter is up to and joined, then friended me on fb so they could see photos of her, once they realized I almost never print out photos anymore due to digital cameras, CD-Rs and the web). I love your idea to separate the personal updates from the fb fan page’s blog updates. That way my friends and family who don’t know how to use RSS/readers, but simply use facebook to know when I’ve added a new post will stay happy, and those who could care less about my blog won’t feel like I’m spamming their fb walls with blog posts. Loooong story short, THANK YOU so much for this helpful post, from one dedicated parent blogger to another! :)

Debbie, if you set up the auto-feed people will automatically see those updates if they are Fans of your FB page. You can still post on your FB Fan Wall with updates, but you won’t have to add your links to your blog posts manually anymore.

You make it seem easy but I’m not able to get this to work for me. Networked Blogs is telling me “your feed is not setup to publish to your wall. Click the ‘Feed Settings’ menu on the right side to edit your preferences.” I do this, have them post a test to my wall, it appears but then it’s not updating. Any ideas what i might be doing wrong? Thanks.

Lauren, are you referring to the big red box you see on the networked blog page? If you are doing a test and it’s working then when new posts come through on the feed, it should feed over to your wall. If you wait after a post about an hour, see if it’s updating. The feed won’t take over everything, just what you update AFTER you set up the networked blog.

If it’s still not showing up after you do a post with the feed set up on the Networked Blog, I would go back and follow the steps again to make sure you didn’t forget to click a button somewhere.

Andrea,
I have followed your steps exactly and setting up my Fan Page went just as you said it would. The only problem I’m running into is what to use as a profile picture for my fan page. I’m a brand new blogger. I don’t want to spend any money on a logo. Any suggestions?
Thanks!!

Becky – YAY!!! I never had a logo until this year. But, with all of my stuff I just took some screen shots of my home page and tried to make things look good in a paint document (if you are familiar with it).

Oh my. I don’t know what I would have done without these instructions! Everything else I found prior to this page had incorrect information and nothing I tried worked. After spending about two hours on this I am finally on Networked Blogs and have Fan Page up – but the feed will only appear in Networked Blogs and not on my Fan Page. Do you think Facebook makes this difficult on purpose? ;)

OMG – thank you so much!!
I’ve just made a fan page but couldn’t get the posts from my blog to publish onto the wall of my fan page.
I’ve been searching the net on how to sort the feed thing out and you’ve saved my life – I was going mad trying to work it out lol
Do you happen to know how long it takes from posting something on my blog for it to appear on my fan page? Thank you again.
Jan

I have a group page for my blog, but not a fan page. Should I set up a different page? I tried to follow your instructions, but when I clicked on the networked blog link it asked me to like 5 pages first. I did not see anywhere to add a new blog. Any ideas?

I haven’t tried it yet, but your instructions look great and very easy to follow. Thank you so much for directing me to this page after I put out my blanket “HELP” statement on twitter! I have signed up for email updates and look forward to seeing more of your writing.